I love my job.
I have a million things to do.
I didn’t do them all this week.
But I went out to coffee with a friend on Thursday.
It was actually an important highlight of my week. I had lots of work stuff, but as I had an ever growing task list, I divvied up some of the important things that didn’t need to be done by me specifically to a few other people while also crossing off some tasks myself. Then I stopped working. I honoured that lenten decision to not overwork, and I clocked my hours and sat back when I was done recognising that I could do more later.
It’s not easy when a hundred people want me to do their thing first and especially when it’s just a few minutes of my time that they want, but I spent a lot of time enjoying the view from my deck and had a couple of purposeful not-work hangouts. I was last minute invited to a prayer hangout where some wonderful young people laid hands on me and prayed over me. What a blessing. I get to live this real life because I said yes to Jesus.
People love me and care for me here. It’s sometimes hard to have left behind my family and community in Portland, but I am grateful for the growing relationships I have here in Christchurch. The friend I went to coffee with on Thursday is relatively new to our church, and she’s lived a bunch of different places. We talked about how building community can be hard, and it’s isn’t always as simple as joining a church or even a life group to make friends.
This week has given me so many opportunities to celebrate the decision to have a full life here because I am purposefully not overworking myself in the lead up to camp. My prayer partner for camp asked what my specific needs for prayer this week were, and I answered that I wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget each individual kid is a person made in the image of God as I worked out tent lists and payment plans and subsidy sourcing. The details matter, and the details are people.
I also need to have enough non-leaky tents to cover our kids on camp. By the grace of God, a life group with several families who have current teenagers has stepped up to inventory our tents and source some new ones for the youth group so that I don’t have to stress over it. Without even asking, we’ve ended up with five new or almost new tents for our youth group. God worked it all out without me stressing over anything.
More time for me to sit on my deck and hang out with friends.
